


Survive

by trufflemores



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: 2.23, Angst, Character Study, Gen, Redemption, The Race of His Life, reaction fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-29
Updated: 2016-05-29
Packaged: 2018-07-11 00:36:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7017031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trufflemores/pseuds/trufflemores
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>2.23. Historically, Barry has a 50% chance of dying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Survive

**Author's Note:**

> Hey y'all! You might have noticed my extended absence; I had some laptop issues but recently acquired a new one! I just wanted to offer a quick guide in case you aren't familiar with my time travel theories over on my tumblr (same username).
> 
> Barry-1: Future Barry.  
> Barry-2: Our Barry.  
> Barry-3: Fast Enough Barry.  
> Barry-4: Flash Back Barry.  
> Barry-5: Out of Time Barry.  
> Barry-6: Legends of Yesterday Barry.  
> Barry-7: The Race of His Life Barry (magnetar).  
> Barry-8: The Race of His Life Barry (behind-the-door).  
> Barry-9: The Race of His Life Barry (child).
> 
> Warning for: quasi-permanent character death.
> 
> Enjoy!

 

 _B_ _arry-9, Child_.

The sound wakes him up.

It's like a thunderstorm, but very close. Sitting upright, Barry looks around the room for the source. His attention fixes on the fish tank, his goldfish suspended in the water above it. Breathing quickly, he climbs out of bed, aware that something is very, very wrong. Approaching his door, he hears the noise get louder – and then he opens it and a hurricane pummels his senses.

There is red and yellow lightning, crackling, enormous, shattering glass and raging around the room with tornado-like intensity, destroying everything it touches. Reeling at the scene, Barry wants to shut the door, bury himself in his bed, and wait for it to pass. Then he hears Mom screaming and something switches in him. Fear roots him to the spot. Hold-your-ground. Mom needs help.

"Mom!" he shouts, stepping closer to her kneeling form in the center of the storm. " _Mom!_ "

At first, she doesn't hear him. " _Henry!_ " she wails. " _Henry!_ "

" _Mom!_ " he repeats.

"Barry?" There is hysteria in her tone as she tells him to get back, but he needs to get closer to help her. He has to get her inside his room, where it's safe, until the lightning is gone. That's all he has to do.

Then Dad shows up and puts both hands on Barry's shoulders, shouting, " _Run, Barry, run!_ "

 _Mom_ , he thinks. _Mom_.

A flash of yellow light sweeps past him, something grabs him – the wind, it must be the wind – but before he can panic it's gone, leaving him alone. He's outside – it's cold and dark and he's _scared_ – and the night is utterly still.

 _Just a dream_ , he thinks, running home. _Just a dream_.

But he knows it isn't.

Back home, there are police cars. His stomach drops. Iris' dad is a cop; Barry knows enough about them to know that a house call late at night is bad.

"Oh, thank God," Dad says, climbing down from the porch and rushing forward, sweeping Barry into his arms. "Thank God."

Head pressed against Dad's shoulder, Barry feels him shake – or maybe that's his own shaking, petrified, humbled.

"You're okay," Dad says, "everything's okay."

He sniffs, clinging to his dad's shirt, wishing there weren't so many other people around – Tony always calls him a crybaby, and he's not, he's _not_ – but none of them seem to be paying him any attention to him.

"Where's Mom?" Barry asks.

"She's okay," Dad says, pulling back a little and taking his hand. "Come on, I'll—"

" _Barry_."

Mom joins them at the base of the stairs and he lets go of Dad so he can hug her. Her hand on the back of his head, she holds him close and murmurs, "My sweet boy, oh my sweet boy." There are tear tracks on her face and Barry still wants to know _what_ happened, but the house is quiet again, everything is settling down, and even his pounding heart is slowing. The police officers seem more casual than concerned, sweeping up the place, filing their reports.

It's okay.

"It's a rare phenomenon," a woman is saying in the distance. "Ball lightning – scary stuff. Wrecked the place. No one was hurt."

Four words change history: _no one was hurt._

It's not always the case.

* * *

_Barry-8, Watcher_.

Pulse pounding, Barry staggers out of the Speed Force. A quick turn reveals his old bedroom. Triumphs builds in his chest.

He did it. Wells – _Thawne_ was right.

He actually made it back.

 _You have two minutes_ , Caitlin and Cisco warned him, _before the wormhole becomes unstable and forms a singularity_. Ample time to save his mom.

Looking around, he is stricken by the familiarity of the scene. He hasn't been in here in years. It's one thing to consider wistfully, hypothetically what could happen if he could _go back_ to that night and change everything; it's another to be standing in the middle of the room, on the clock, hyperaware of his environment.

The room is dark, painted by moonlight in cool blue-green tones. It has an abandoned feel, sheltered but broken in, like a safe house that couldn't stand up to the storm. The broken fish tank across the room is testimony to that lack of immunity; shattered glass and unmoving goldfish carpet the floor. Through the walls Barry can hear the storm, but it isn't outside. It's _inside_.

_It was like a ball of lightning in my house._

Venturing towards his destiny, Barry opens the door.

It's loud and bright and hauntingly familiar: red and yellow streaks, not at supersonic speeds but perfectly visible. The Reverse Flash gets in some solid hits; the Future Flash deals some equally persuasive blows. Neither has the upper hand, however, and Barry watches with breathless anticipation as they fight, flexing his hands in his gloves, waiting.

 _Let older you take younger you to safety_ , Cisco instructed. _Then you can stop the Reverse Flash from killing your mom_.

He waits. He waits. And then the Future Flash pauses, looking right at him, and puts up a hand. He shakes his head and vanishes before Barry can voice a single question.

_Why?_

Then – there's an anomaly.

Because Future Flash carries his child self out of the room. But then a second streak of yellow lightning tears into the house, smashing Reverse Flash off his feet. _No_ , Barry thinks, frozen, _no, no, this isn't right_.

"You're not gonna hurt anyone ever again," the vindictive Flash whispers, pinning Eobard's body as he slumps to the floor, dead, unconscious, Barry can't tell.

But there is a world-ending dizziness overtaking him. His heartbeat slows; darkness closes in at the corners of his vision as the vindictive Flash approaches. Standing behind the door watching him, Barry tries to draw in a breath and fails.

Looking down, humbled at the enormity of the situation, he looks at his hands. He can still feel their hugs, their promises, their _come back to us_ regards. As he fades into nonexistence, he looks up at the vindictive Flash, silently imploring him for help.

It never comes.

Barry's existence is erased; he dies without a sound.

* * *

_Barry-7, Racer._

The Magnetar powers up, but Barry doesn't stop running.

Heat builds under his skin, an agitating burn in seconds, scalding in less than a minute. His core body temperature rises precipitously; the abnormality urges him to slow down, a primordial system set in place to keep him alive. But he doesn't. He has a higher goal. A non-negotiable goal.

Barry doesn't stop even when the systems in his suit go offline. The cooling system is one of the last to surrender as the coolant itself evaporates. The soles of his boots disintegrate; the suit's tri-polymer shield – the last wall of defense between Barry and the Magnetar's fiery energy – burns off. When the energy – the Speed, the lightning – takes his skin, too, Barry screams.

Every instinct he possesses rears against incineration, against oblivion, but for the fading higher cognitive functions, the ceasefire calls comfortingly to him. It is a Great Exhalation, the end of a long, painful intermedium between life and Speed Force.

When he dies, it is not without gratitude.

* * *

_Barry-6, Right Hand._

There is ash in his lungs and fire in his veins.

Outrunning the wave of energy generated by Vandal Savage's scepter, Barry can feel the presence of a second speedster. He looks over as that inarguable Other catches up to him with effortless, powerful strokes. Impulsively, he puts up a hand in a wave, urging it onward. _Run, Mercury_ , he thinks, _run_.

Stranded in his own present and feeling the urgency of impending doom, Barry forces himself to keep going even as the Other overtakes him. Exhaustion slows his trembling legs, but desperation pushes him onward. He outpaces the pulse of energy at his back consuming buildings, flushing out millions of people. He outruns death, but only for so long.

Aware that in another lifetime, all will be well, Barry slows – imperceptibly, fractionally – and vanishes in the pyroclastic flow of energy.

The Other speedster flies by.

* * *

_Barry-5, Echo_.

Time travel echoes.

The second speedster isn't really there as they race down the street. Until the tsunami hits, his doppelganger and he are one and the same. It's a causation error: the tsunami must happen before the mirror image, but the divergence happens before the tsunami. Thus: the echo.

The _time remnant_.

In the beginning, when they see each other, neither of them knows what will happen next. There is a pervasive sense of _intrusiveness_ , an interruption to something that was never meant to be broken. All Barry can think is, _Time travel_.

But until the cause occurs, the effect is detached, stupefying. Until the cause, the two worlds overlap confusingly – split and unsplit, interrupted and uninterrupted – and produce mirror images.

( _Oh I'm not like The Flash at all. Some might say I'm the Reverse._ )

Doppelgangers.

The echo doesn't know he's the echo at all, only aware of one self, _Barry_ , and a shadow in his future, a storm on his horizon.

They live that day together, twenty-four hours in the same space, the same skin. They feel the same terror as Mark Mardon nearly kills Joe; the same dread as Mardon grievously injures Captain Singh; the same horror when Eddie tells Iris and them that _Joe's been kidnapped_.

The same singular determination to rescue Joe.

Then Iris tells him that she has never stopped having feelings about him ( _them_ ) and they kiss and Barry almost doesn't care that they're about to die.

Almost.

"I didn't want you to find out this way," Barry tells her.

 _I'm sorry_ , he thinks, running for his life, for all of their lives. He runs because Caitlin said a vortex might stop the tsunami, might sap its strength and render it harmless. He runs because he has someone to go home to, _Iris_ , and someone to save, _Joe_. He runs because this is the life he has chosen. Millions of people depend on him. Dr. Wells. Caitlin. _Cisco_.

If only he knew.

( _In many ways you have shown me what it's like to have a son_.)

He runs, and he can feel the tremble in his legs. Everything loses focus, the two of them bolting as fast and hard as they can up the shoreline. They share the same body, until – until the divergence.

The Barry who does not escape runs, feeling the presence of a second speedster on his heels. In the time stream, they run beside each other, and the Other speedster moves ahead while Barry falters. He doesn't surge ahead this time. His time remnant runs screaming into oblivion. He stays behind.

Mirror images.

The time remnant rushes into the past, greeting the echo, and around and around they go, correcting, recalculating, ensuring the future is secure.

As for Barry – the left-behind, the _echo_ , the expendable – he skids to a halt in the sand and has enough time to wonder what the hell just happened before the tsunami smashes through the wall of wind.

The impact kills him instantly.

* * *

_Barry-4, Optimist_.

Hartley Rathaway.

It's a straightforward assignment: take down one of Dr. Wells' former protégés and reel him in for a little 'actions have consequences' talk. Hartley thinks he can stop Barry – _fastest man alive_ Barry – from bringing him in?

Uncompliant, Hartley refuses the peaceable, come-with-me way. _All right. Hard way it is_ , Barry thinks.

"Are they going to hear you die?" Hartley sneers.

Barry almost laughs. "No," he says, broad, join-me levels of amusement in his tone, "they're gonna hear you get your ass kicked."

 _This is gonna be fun_ , Barry thinks, seconds before the sound blast knocks him clean off his feet and puts him through a glass installation.

He never hits the concrete, grabbed mid-run as a second speedster pins him up against a wall.

Barry can't do anything but _stare_.

"Wai-wai-wait, who are you, what—" _Why do you look like me why did you take my comms what's going on?_

This is weird, this is _so_ weird, and Barry really needs to eat more of Cisco's inedible protein bars because clearly he's hunger-hallucinating. Rather spectacularly, he might add. Like, 4D, front-row quality.

The alternative is to actually believe there is literally a second speedster who looks exactly like him pressing him against the concrete, telling him he has no time to explain – explain _what_ exactly? – before pulling out a freaking _mammoth dart_ and aiming for Barry's chest.

 _Okay, not a hallucination_ , Barry realizes, ducking out of his grasp. The other speedster chases him up a wall and tries to grab him. _Definitely not a hallucination_ , Barry confirms _._ Knocking the dart out of his hands – _yeah no didn't sign up to be murdered today sorry_ – Barry dashes for safety, _oomphing_ when the other speedster smashes into him, _throwing_ him across the concrete.

 _Wow_ , he thinks, winded, dazed, back of his suit epically road-burned but skin underneath thankfully just chafed. It reminds him almost hysterically of that expression: _I trust him as far as I can throw him_.

Then the other speedster Flashes into sight and h'oh my god, what are you _AH_. Is his final, eloquent response to the matter as evil Flash stabs him in the thigh.

It takes a grand total of four seconds for the great and unstoppable Flash to surrender to the sedative, dimly, half-consciously aware of the dart being unsheathed ( _ow_ ) and his emblem being stolen ( _Cisco's gonna kill me_ ) before he slips under completely.

When he wakes up, he has one of _the_ worst headaches of his life and he's stuck in a closet.

 _Classic supervillain_ , Barry thinks, allowing a moment to weather the aching pulse behind his eyes. He feels around, already knowing he doesn't have his phone on him. Pockets, he thinks seriously. _Suit needs_ pockets. Moving on to option B, he tries to contact Star Labs – but evil Flash already took out his comms. Reaching for the door handle, he toggles it, optimistically trying to get the door to comply. When that fails, he braces himself – he's seen enough action movies with Cisco to know how this goes down – before throwing his weight against the door, repeatedly.

On the twelfth impact, he spills out of the room as someone opens the door from the other side. Catching his bearings quickly, he Flashes to his feet mid-fall. A dazed police offer asks, "The hell?"

" _Thanks!_ " he shouts in a warbled tone, already out the door, bolting for home before evil Flash realizes he's at large.

Now that he's out in the fresh air, Barry feels his annoyance mounting. _How dare_ an evil version of himself attack him.

If it even is himself – they haven't exactly met a shapeshifting meta, but Barry wouldn't put anything past the particle accelerator explosion, the gift that keeps on giving. A shapeshifting meta would be dangerous. Someone who could impersonate him convincingly enough to get close to his friends. Stomach sinking, he runs as fast as he can, zipping down the hallways at Star Labs and skidding to a halt into the cortex. "Where is he?" he demands, looking around, heart still pounding, head pulsing in unison.

"Where's the Other Flash?" he clarifies.

Cisco and Caitlin give him a slow _what are you talking about_ look; Dr. Wells just puts his head in his hand, like he knows something, and Barry is about to ask except—

"I'm right here."

And that's – that's Barry.

Oh.

So much for supervillain, he thinks, frowning, questioning. Caitlin can't tell them apart – _I'm Barry,_ you're Barry – but Barry can see why it's hard to believe. Still, can't they _tell_ an imposter when they see one?

( _Could you?_ he wonders, staring at the doppelganger who looks not just sort-of but _exactly_ like him. A little more tired around the edges, a little more aged, and it occurs to Barry that he looks like a slightly _older_ version of himself, but it's so improbable he doesn't say it out loud.)

Helpfully, Cisco steps in to defend Barry's honor – before abruptly turning on him and for real?

"I watched _Wrath of Khan_ with you like five times," he points out.

With gratifying enthusiasm, Cisco pins the Other Barry down with an accusatory finger. " _Aha! Imposter!_ "

He isn't expecting the Other Barry to speak, a smooth, perfect delivery, no hitch of a lie. "Yeah, and every time at the end you turn to me and say, 'I have been and always shall be your friend.'"

Barry blinks, rendered silent. Folding his arms slowly, he thinks, _We need a passcode_. Cisco is looking between the two of them with obvious confusion, struggling to choose. Barry can't even blame him – it's too specific, too _unspoken_ to have been picked up through careful sleuthing. The only way Other Barry could know was if he _was there_.

 _Holy shit_.

Doppelganger.

It starts to come together slowly, making more and more sense as Other Barry explains it. Then he says he's from _the future_ and Barry can accept a second speedster, can accept even the idea of a _clone,_ a twin, a doppelganger, but a time traveler?

"The future?" he repeats dumbly.

"Yes," Dr. Wells replies.

Again, he asks, "The _future_?" because no one else seems to be grasping the magnitude of this situation.

Patiently, Dr. Wells repeats, "Yes."

"The _fu_ —"

"Yes."

Barry picks up on the growing impatience in Wells' tone and doesn't push his luck. _This is trippy_ , he thinks, watching Other Barry. Trying to pin down how _he is from the future_ is a compatible idea without giving too much voice to his doubts. He refuses to look ridiculous in front of this – older Barry.

They get on a time wraith tangent and Barry has no idea what it is but clearly it's _bad_ and they need to stop it.

Other Barry takes over the controls and Barry can't help but hover, wanting to be close enough to him in case he changes his mind about the whole nice guy act and tries to dart any of them. He doesn't, and Barry needn't worry: this Barry projects an aura, too, identical to Barry's, the clearest signature of a true speedster that Barry can read.

 _This is trippy_ , he thinks, mesmerized by Other Barry, watching him more than the screen he's working on. It's weird to see himself move from the periphery, an angle he can never see directly and scarcely through mirrors, rarely through photographs. It brings home a certain strangeness to his own existence: _this is what you are like, as a human being_.

Blinking, he's tempted to sway against Barry, to get a read on how strong he is, to just process what he's _like_ from an outsider's perspective. Then he gets a grip on himself – next he'll ask Other Barry whether he still likes mugs or some other stupid question – and focuses on the screen for real. It's surprisingly easy to become absorbed in the task, all things considered: suddenly it's like they're on the same wavelength, moving at the same time, emitting the same sort of _I come in peace_ vibes that bring down the tension in the room.

Caitlin says, "Barry," and Barry is surprised that he doesn't immediately respond, that the Other Barry rears up, soldierly, at attention in an instant. Barry stares for a moment longer at the screen, going over the plan one last time, before he, too, straightens. Other Barry pulls Cisco aside and Barry has to suppress an urge to say, _He's not yours_ because he isn't Barry's, either.

He shouldn't be defensive, but _your Barry_ is still a touchy subject, especially given how immediately Cisco and Caitlin and Dr. Wells warm to him. It's eerie.

 _You are utterly replaceable_.

Shaking the thought off, he focuses his energy at the task at hand. Swaps out emblems with Other Barry, grateful to have his own red back where it belongs. And maybe the white _does_ look good on him, older, more mature, more refined. But the red is _Barry_ and he won't surrender that identity easily.

 _I am not replaceable_.

In the particle accelerator, homeward bound ( _the future_ ), Other Barry gets off to a good start, but the time wraith catches him quickly, slowing him down. _He's not gonna make it_ , goes unsaid.

 _To hell with that_ , Barry thinks.

And this – _this_ is what Barry does, what _makes him_ a hero. He Flashes out of the room before Dr. Wells' "No, Barry!" can persuade him to stay. He flies down the particle accelerator, flushed with adrenaline, alive with the thrill of the chase. Not being the target emboldens him; he doesn't hesitate to leap onto the time wraith's back, knocking it clean off course and giving Other Barry a chance to fly ahead. The time wraith gets up, but Barry is almost gone, and it blinks out of sight with him a second later.

Barry Flashes back to the entrance of the particle accelerator, exhaling deeply, satisfied and surprised with how exhilarated he feels. Whatever happens to future Barry, he knows one thing about himself: he has a future.

It's reassuring. Sure, he might look more tired, but there is so much about time travel that they don't know.

Maybe Barry can fix that.

* * *

_Barry-3, Survivor_.

Sometimes, time travel makes life easier.

But for the Barry clinging to the mother of his younger self, a mother who he did not dare save, it's almost worse. Listening to a version of his mother die again strains at every protective instinct he possesses.

It's not his universe: it's another universe belonging to another, younger Barry, but it doesn't feel any less real. That Barry isn't here, spirited away by his future self. He might already be on his way home, though, about to learn the most devastating truth of his life.

 _Your mother won't be in the rest of it_.

The Barry in the room – the divergent, the time traveler, the Other – steps forward from behind the door as his mother whimpers on the floor. Drawn towards her, he kneels down, comforting, trying to make dying less painful as he holds onto her gently. There is a risk associated with visiting her, even though she is clearly dying: Barry doesn't know the consequences, what sort of ripple effects he might trigger. But he does know that he can't let her die alone, even if _his_ mother already did.

She is a doppelganger, just like the Iris he left behind before the tsunami ( _and_ _just like the Oliver he will one day leave behind in the explosion_ ).

But when she cradles his head in her hands, she _is_ his mother.

Saying goodbye to her is the hardest thing he has ever done. And leaving the eleven-year-old Barry to discover the wreckage puts a lump in Barry's throat. Even as he finally leaves behind his past and enters a new future, a future resembling his own, he feels stronger when he clashes with the new Thawne.

And when the new Eddie kills himself, collapsing the entire Thawne line leading up to Eobard, Eobard dies.

But not every version.

* * *

_Barry-1, Hero_.

Extraordinary turns define Barry's life. But perhaps the most impactful is the presence of the Reverse Flash, a time traveler who came back from the twenty-second century to stop him in the twenty-first, to kill him if he could. The Reverse Flash is a vindictive time traveler who chooses to go back even farther into Barry's own past to kill Barry's younger self in the hopes that it will erase the present Barry.

The Reverse Flash doesn't know that it won't do anything to the present Barry.

But Barry _does_ , and letting the Reverse Flash kill another version of himself amounts to murder when he can prevent it.

So he follows the Reverse Flash. He fights him in that living room on that formerly peaceful night, creating a major divergence that will define the rest of the new Barry's life. A night which was peaceful for him becomes chaotic for this Barry.

But Barry has no choice: trauma is still better than death.

He only makes the journey once – _cumulatively, three times: this night, alone; the next night, with an onlooker; and the final night, with an onlooker and an intruder_ – but he makes it count. He doesn't let the Reverse Flash kill his younger self, spiriting him away while the Reverse Flash reels. He gets the younger Barry twenty blocks away before his own taxed reserves falter, disappearing into the night.

After a dizzying moment, he doubles back, investigating from a distance. He watches, helpless, as they put his dad in a police car. He watches as his mom's body is taken away on a stretcher in a black bag.

He watches it unfold and thinks, _Am I a hero?_

* * *

_Barry-2, Redeemer._

In Barry's eyes – unequivocally, unalterably – the answer is yes.

He tried to fix it, killing the Watcher, stranding the Child in a chaotic universe resembling the Hero's own. He erased all descendants of the Watcher, including the Right Hand and the Optimist. He denied the Racer the opportunity to save infinite universes, sparing him a terrible death; he rescued the Echo from his last good day. He took his entire universe and shook it down to its core, narrowing it down to a single moment in time:

 _The_ divergence. The night his mother was murdered.

He thought saving her would give him peace.

The only peace he finds is in that lineage, the past he shares with the Hero, before this night, but the future he shares with the Child, the Watcher, the Right Hand, the Optimist, the Racer, the Echo.

So he goes back. One last time.

He says goodbye to the doppelgangers of this universe, a version of the Child's. He hugs Iris and Eddie, smiling in a way that isn't painful because he can live with knowing she will be okay with him when he is gone. He savors his final hours with his mom and dad, drinking in their presence, asking as many questions as he can think of for answers he will never forget. Innocuous questions about their life – _remember whens_ from a fuzzy, vaguely remembered timeline; they always echo back, never quite letting him forget what he's lived through, what he's died from – and he savors the richness of those memories he never fully lived.

His echo lived this life. His echo gifted him with that much: the Child grew up and Barry walks in a future split from him.

Feeling generous, Barry finishes all of his casework for Captain Singh for the week. He cleans his room and his lab. Playing with fate, he writes letters to Cisco and Caitlin, subtly encouraging them to meet to enhance their mutual talents, never selected as they were by Harrison Wells – _the_ Harrison Wells – for his team. Barry spends a long time pouring over a letter for him, too, at last settling on a short email: _Your work changed my life._

Before he hits send, he adds two words: _Thank you._

As sunset approaches, he buys a handful of roses and visits the graveyard. He didn't want to come, but he had to be here. Sinking to the grass beside the headstone, he huddles close to Joe's grave for a few hours and tells him about the future his sons will have: how Wally is doing great ( _will be doing even better, flying faster than the speed of sound, a speedster someday_ ) and how he, too, is doing well. He tells him that Iris is happy. Barry tells Joe that he loves him.

And then he says goodbye as the sun finally sinks below the horizon and pushes himself upright, bracing himself for what he needs do.

It's almost easy, working in tandem with that Other, The Flash. The Flash is Speed Force, part of him, part of it, an emissary between the two, and it preserves all of their timelines. It remembers the Barrys who didn't make it – and the ones who did. Even though Barry has never seen the Optimist again, he knows because of The Flash that he is doing well. _What_ is a mystery, but well is a given: the Optimist thrives.

Barry's ready to thrive, too, and he surrenders to Speed Force, to The Flash, to those memories, to this skill which is uniquely his own and shared among a coterie, a _family_ , and he wants there to be more, to be others, to be speedsters he can be friends with.

Flashing back, he arrives outside the house. It doesn't disarm him; he knows this scene, and being here – being _home_ – brings a surprising amount of peace. _I know this place_ , he thinks. _I know how this event needs to happen_.

He sees the intruder standing on the streets, terrified, devastated, hurt, and they watch together as the Hero spirits away the younger Barry.

As soon as the Intruder makes a move, Barry grabs him and yanks him off to one side of the house, out of sight. He says, "Barry" and feels the Intruder's fists against him, fighting him, _let me go_. "I know," he repeats, and it hurts, the bruising impacts not just physical as the Intruder's efforts grow desperate, panicking, as the scene in the living room reaches their ears, wailing. "It's okay," he insists, holding on for both of their lives, and then there's a piercing scream cut off as the knife sinks home.

Then it's quiet.

The Intruder slouches in his grip, gasping, shaking breaths, like he can't quite believe what just happened, _I failed_ , and Barry puts a hand on his knee and tries to let The Flash speak to him directly, a soft, constant stream of _it's okay_ radiating from him in palpable waves of heat.

They sit there as sirens approach, the police will be here soon, and then they're on their feet.

Barry says, "I'm here," and he knows it's The Flash who looks back at him through the Intruder's golden eyes, unreadable, pain or anger, fear or sadness masked by it.

The Intruder asks thickly, "Why?"

And Barry replies, "Because it made this life _yours_." Reaching out, he squeezes his shoulder, promising, "It's gonna be okay."

The Intruder bows his head, nodding slowly, and looks at Barry before saying, "I should go."

Barry nods. The Intruder vanishes without another word.

As for himself, he spares a moment to look inside. The Barry-behind-the-door – the Watcher – rights himself with a shudder, Flashing out of the room, his mother's body on the floor in the space between them. The Hero is long gone, off in some future, still shaping Barry's life without ever directly meeting him.

The Survivor runs home.

To the new future, the Redeemer goes back.

He knocks on Joe's door and smiles tiredly when Wally answers. "Hey," he says.

Wally grins. "Hey. Wanna come in?"

Barry nods, and the room is almost exactly as he left it. He smiles at Cisco and Caitlin at the table, feeling warmed at their presence, at their companionable banter. Iris approaches him, looking a mixture of concerned and hopeful, and he tells her, "Hey," even as she wraps her arms around him, hugging him tight. "I'm okay," he tells her, chin on her shoulder. "I'm okay, Iris."

And for the first time in a long time, he finally believes it.


End file.
